Win 98 Memory Management

[dave225]

I had posted an earlier message in the system troubleshooting forum ...

My machine is really slow - now I think it may be the O.S. - when I turn on System Monitor, it shows that every time I click the mouse, open a window, etc, that the system is at 100% CPU utilization.

Here's the monitoring log as I type - logging every second:
(99,78,88,88,87,87,87,86,88,87,86,87,86,86,86,86,8 6,86,86,86,88,90,86,85,86,86,86,88,86,86,86,86,86, 86,86,86,86,91,87,87,86,89,86,87,87,87,88,87,87,88 ,87,87,88,87,86,86,86) (nothing else running.)

... seems high to me. Resource Meter shows that most resources are free most of the time. I'm guessing that Win98 is allowing programs to grab too much memory.

Is there a way to limit the amount of memory a process can use? I.e. I think my system is slow because resources aren't being shared - they're sequential. ...Or is there a way to fine-tune multitasking/resource sharing?

BTW - I had great difficulty installing Win98. The installation was very slow & I reinstalled from a Rescue disk (floppy.) A lot of drivers were not found when the new hardware (new motherboard/cpu & therefore re-installing video, usb, sound, modem) was detected. Don't think that affected the installation per se - also, autoexec, system.ini & config.sys were recreated from scratch by the setup program. (reformatted drive before re-installing win98 - because I was having so many problems.) Do the autoexec etc. files have much relevance with win98? Any settings in there that affect memory?

Thanks
-225

[BigBlue66]

Hi Dave,

The autoexec.bat file normally does not have any command lines that refer to memory.

However, for WIN98, your config.sys file should have two lines that read as follows:

Device=c:\windows\himem.sys
Device=c:\windows\emm386.exe

It sounds like you may have some sort of dos level memory manager loading at the same time as the windows memory managers are loading, and the system is fighting with itself, so to speak. Just a hunch.

If your config.sys file has lines that reference any kind of memory manager, other than the two listed above, try disabling those commands by placing a colon in front of the line. Save, exit and reboot. See if that helps.

Or, if by chance your config.sys file does not list the lines mentioned above, add them, disable any other lines that have to do with memory managers. Save exit and reboot. See if that helps.

Good luck.

Big Blue 66

[BigBlue66]

Me Again Dave,

If my prior post shows no results or if everything is ok with your config.sys file, then I think maybe it has to do with real-mode drivers being loaded at bootup.

Have you checked your Device Manager for flagged items, like a yellow exclamation mark next to any of the devices? If you have any of these, remove the affected items in Device Manager, which will uninstall the drivers for said affected item, reboot and let Windows find the drivers and install them.

Let us know what you find and maybe we can take this a step further.

Big Blue

[Paleo Pete]

One thing to add to Blue's previous post. Boot into Safe Mode if you see any conflicting devices, remove them there, and remove ALL devices shown. Reboot and let windows reinstall them.

Also, in normal operating mode, not Safe Mode, right click My Computer and check the performance tab, see if you have a white box saying some drives are running in MS DOS Compatibility Mode.

And check autoexec.bat and config.sys, Blue is correct there as well.

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Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[dave225]

Thanks -

The problem does seem to be with drivers. I have tried to reinstall the display adapter multiple times, but I can only get the VGA adapter to install. The S3 card will install, but won't show up in the list after I install it.

Also, I'm having trouble with the soundcard drivers - can't find the right driver because I don't know how to describe the hardware - sound is built onto the motherboard - I don't know which manufacturer/model to choose when I install it. (It won't install on its own.)

I'm going to try one more time. I reinstalled my PII/233 with 32MbRam yesterday - It runs much better than the AMD/800 with 160MbRam. I'm going to start over. If it doesn't work, I'm sending the piece o'crap back.

[Reid]

Regarding on-board sound, you might be able to identify the sound chip. SoundPro is a common brand. See if you have a CMI 8330. Another possibility is an ESS 1879. Get a number and it should be fairly easy to search for a driver.

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reido@my-deja.com